RP Will Legalize Drugs?

[mikelovesgod]

Medical marijuana I'm ok with. Will he legalize drugs? Someone let me know his position, I'm trying to research it myself.

 

[angelatc]

He's not really running on that platform. Philosophically speaking, he thinks those things should be left up to the individual states.

 

[Bradley in DC]

What the constitution allows at the FEDERAL level is very restricted (no authority for drug war at that level).

 

[cujothekitten]

I'm pretty sure he'll try to reduce federal funding for the drug war but I'm not sure he can really do much behind that without the approval of congress. If anything people in California will be able to ingest it without worrying about federal agents busting down their front door.

It's legal to acquire marijuana in California if you have a prescription but it's a federal crime so people still get arrested for it. It will probably become legal here in Chicago as well.

 

[mikelovesgod]

Ok... I just read up on Paul's stance on drugs and I'm now wavering on the guy. You cannot legalize insanity and anarchy. Institutionalized legality of things which can kill you easily is insane.

 

[ronpaulitician]

Ron Paul on the War on Drugs

In the last 30 years, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a failed war on drugs. This war has been used as an excuse to attack our liberties and privacy. It has been an excuse to undermine our financial privacy while promoting illegal searches and seizures with many innocent people losing their lives and property. Seizure and forfeiture have harmed a great number of innocent American citizens.

Another result of this unwise war has been the corruption of many law enforcement officials. It is well known that with the profit incentives so high, we are not even able to keep drugs out of our armed prisons. Making our whole society a prison would not bring success to this floundering war on drugs. Sinister motives of the profiteers and gangsters, along with prevailing public ignorance, keep this futile war going. Illegal and artificially high priced drugs drive the underworld to produce, sell and profit from this social depravity. Failure to recognize that drug addiction, like alcoholism, is a disease rather than a crime, encourage the drug warriors in efforts that have not and will not ever work. We learned the hard way about alcohol prohibition and crime, but we have not yet seriously considered it in the ongoing drug war.

Corruption associated with the drug dealers is endless. It has involved our police, the military, border guards and the judicial system. It has affected government policy and our own CIA. The artificially high profits from illegal drugs provide easy access to funds for rogue groups involved in fighting civil wars throughout the world. Ironically, opium sales by the Taliban and artificially high prices helped to finance their war against us. In spite of the incongruity, we rewarded the Taliban this spring with a huge cash payment for promises to eradicate some poppy fields. Sure.

For the first 140 years of our history, we had essentially no Federal war on drugs, and far fewer problems with drug addiction and related crimes was a consequence. In the past 30 years, even with the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the drug war, little good has come of it. We have vacillated from efforts to stop the drugs at the source to severely punishing the users, yet nothing has improved. This war has been behind most big government policy powers of the last 30 years, with continual undermining of our civil liberties and personal privacy. Those who support the IRS's efforts to collect maximum revenues and root out the underground economy, have welcomed this intrusion, even if the drug underworld grows in size and influence.

The drug war encourages violence. Government violence against nonviolent users is notorious and has led to the unnecessary prison overpopulation. Innocent taxpayers are forced to pay for all this so-called justice. Our eradication project through spraying around the world, from Colombia to Afghanistan, breeds resentment because normal crops and good land can be severely damaged. Local populations perceive that the efforts and the profiteering remain somehow beneficial to our own agenda in these various countries.

Drug dealers and drug gangs are a consequence of our unwise approach to drug usage. Many innocent people are killed in the crossfire by the mob justice that this war generates. But just because the laws are unwise and have had unintended consequences, no excuses can ever be made for the monster who would kill and maim innocent people for illegal profits. But as the violent killers are removed from society, reconsideration of our drug laws ought to occur.​

 

[cujothekitten]

Ok... I just read up on Paul's stance on drugs and I'm now wavering on the guy. You cannot legalize insanity and anarchy. Institutionalized legality of things which can kill you easily is insane.

Making drugs illegal isn't going to prevent people from taking them. The focus should be on prevention, rehabilitation and education not punishment. Probation is literally outlawing a chemical reaction that happens in your brain.

Also, marijuana can't kill you.

 

[ronpaulitician]

You cannot legalize insanity and anarchy.

You can't regulate it either. Some people will do stupid things. As long as they don't harm others, can we morally prevent them from doing those stupid things?

 

[mikelovesgod]

If he allows states to prosecute the issue I have no problem. But if his position is the legality of drugs I have severe problems with that. I was to work with people on drugs, some became friends and some are now dead at young ages.

The problem with the "war of drugs" is that the leaders of the country allow drug pushers to go free even though they know they are guilty and know where the drugs are. Watching the head of the CIA admit this changed my view that the problem wasn't the "war" but how the war is being fought, namely, with their eyes shut.

 

[specsaregood]

In Short yes.

//

 

[james1906]

the only time drugs are mentioned in the constitution is the fact that it's written on hemp

 

[cujothekitten]

A consequence of the drug war:

‘No-Knock’ Searches Get People Killed

Last week, we were asking how police found themselves in the bedroom of a naked couple in Lancaster, Calif., in 2001, guns drawn.

This led to a discussion of the problem with "no-knock" – or even "shout-once-and-storm-in" – search warrants.

On Nov. 21 of last year, Atlanta police planted marijuana on Fabian Sheats, a "suspected street dealer." They told Sheats they would let him go if he "gave them something." Sheats obligingly lied that he had spotted a kilogram of cocaine nearby, giving them the address of the elderly spinster Miss Kathryn Johnston, who neither used nor dealt drugs, but who did live in fear of break-ins in her crime-infested neighborhood.

Police then lied to a judge, claiming they had actually purchased drugs at the Johnston house, acquired one of those once-rare "no-knock" warrants, and violently battered down the reinforced metal door of a private home where there were no drugs.

Miss Johnston fired a warning shot at the unknown people busting down her door. That bullet lodged in the roof of her porch, injuring no one. Police replied by firing 39 rounds at her, hitting her five times, and wounding each other with another five rounds – though they lied and said they’d been shot by Miss Johnston.

They then handcuffed the old woman as she bled to death on the floor, and searched her house. Finding no drugs, they planted three bags of marijuana.

Next day, the cops picked up one Alex White, an informant, advising him that they needed him to lie, saying that he had purchased cocaine at Johnston’s house. White refused, managed to escape, and went to the media with the story.

Last month, two of those officers pleaded guilty to manslaughter – in deals which helped them escape murder charges – and now face more than 10 years in prison, after authorities demonstrated they lied to get their warrant.

Greg Jones of the Atlanta FBI office said at a news conference that the FBI is investigating "additional allegations of corruption that Atlanta police officers may have engaged in similar conduct."

Fulton County district attorney Paul Howard said he has started to review hundreds of other cases involving Officers Jason Smith and Gregg Junnier; convictions may be overturned. Last week, Police Chief Richard Pennington transferred his entire narcotics squad to other duties, contending his department would review its policy on "no-knock" warrants and its use of confidential informants. That "review" and seven bucks will get you a fancy cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Officer Smith’s attorney, John Garland, said his client "was trained to lie by fellow officers to establish probable cause."

Meantime, a black man named Cory Maye was still sitting on death row in Mississippi, the last I heard, because he heard men trying to break into his Prentiss, Miss. home late at night in December of 2001, where he was alone with his 18-month-old baby daughter.

Mr. Maye, who had no criminal record, got the child down onto the floor and lay down beside her to protect her. When one of the men finally broke into the bedroom, Cory Maye shot and killed him.

The man was hit in the abdomen, just below his bulletproof vest, and died a short time later. It turns out the man who had failed to knock and identify himself before breaking in was a cop, who was really after suspects in the other half of the duplex where Cory Maye lived. Turns out the cop was the white son of the white chief of police. An all-white jury sentenced Cory Maye, who is black, to death for exercising his right to defend his locked home and family against violent invasion by an unknown intruder. The all-white jury took only a few hours to do so, at least one juror explaining he wanted to get home for supper.

The list of such abuses goes on and on – without even mentioning the dozens of innocent women and children who eventually died thanks to the bungled and totally unnecessary 1993 BATF "incredibly-no-knock" raid on the Branch Davidian Church in Waco, Texas, whose residents (including Wayne Martin, a black Harvard Law School graduate) had previously demonstrated they would cheerfully cooperate with any law enforcement officer who merely knocked at the door and asked to see their guns.

(At Waco, the agents shot a dog and her puppies in their outdoor pen before they even got to the front door. Agents in National Guard helicopters – their ban from such actions on U.S. soil bypassed by the simple expedient of filling out sworn and thoroughly laughable affidavits claiming there was a "meth lab" inside a Christian church full of women and children – shot down through the roof, killing a nursing mother inside as her infant played by her bedside. When the unarmed Rev. David Koresh opened the front door to say, "Wait a minute, there are women and children here, let’s talk," agents fired at him, hitting his unarmed father-in-law, who stood behind him. Later, agents couldn’t even remember who carried the warrant. No one even CLAIMED they tried to "serve" it.)

For a partial rundown, see "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America" by Cato Institute analyst Radley Balko along with the accompanying "map of botched paramilitary raids."

Charles P. Garcia, in "The Knock and Announce Rule: A New Approach to the Destruction-of-Evidence Exception," 1993, reports: "In 1970, the Nixon administration declared a ‘War on Drugs.’ The Justice Department urged Congress to enact a comprehensive anti-drug strategy and suggested that a general ‘no-knock’ provision could constitutionally be added to aid in enforcement. ...

"The ‘no-knock’ experience lasted four years. ... During the four-year period when ‘no-knock’ warrants were issued, horror stories were legion. ... In an exhaustive eight-week investigation by The New York Times, consisting of interviews with victims of ‘no-knock’ raids, reporters found that ‘Innocent Americans around the country have been subject to dozens of mistaken, violent and often illegal police raids by local, state and Federal narcotics agents in search of illicit drugs and their dealers.’

"In Florida, complaints of police harassment during drug searches were so overwhelming that Legal Services of Greater Miami was unable to handle the caseload. In Virginia, a terror-stricken woman, a previous burglary victim, shot and killed a young police officer executing a ‘no-knock’ warrant as he burst into her bedroom in the middle of the night."

(Astonishingly, no prosecution resulted, so far as I’ve been able to learn. The old woman, waiting terrified behind her closed bedroom door, had repeatedly called out, "Who’s in my house?" As with Chief Pennington in Atlanta, the bereaved Virginia chief said he would "review" his department’s use of no-knock warrants.)

"In California," Mr. Garcia continues, "one father was shot through the head as he sat in a living room cradling his infant son. Both the woman and the man were totally innocent of any wrongdoing. The federal ‘no-knock’ warrants were so disruptive that Congress repealed them four years later ... once again making ‘no-knock’ searches illegal under the federal ‘knock-and-announce’ rule."

So: what were those L. A. sheriff’s deputies doing in that bedroom in Lancaster, Calif., forcing Max Rettele and Judy Sadler to crawl out of bed naked, pointing guns at their heads and screaming and not allowing them even to grab a sheet or blanket to cover their nakedness?

The African-American suspects – who had moved – were sought for "identity theft," not a violent crime. There was no suspected "stash" that could be flushed down a toilet.

So why didn’t police knock at that door at suppertime, allowing the clothed couple to come to the door and calmly read their warrant before inviting police in to look around and confirm that the three African-Americans that police sought no longer lived there?

"While the facts in this case are unusual, not to say humorous," chuckled the reliably pro-police-state Los Angeles Times in an editorial last week, "the bottom line is important: Even when police follow the law, pursuit of the guilty will sometimes inconvenience – and embarrass – the innocent."

Oh, ha ha. Naked in their own bedroom. A little embarrassment. A little inconvenience. Chuckle chuckle.

And if Max Rettele and Judy Sadler had been armed? If they had opened fire on those gun-brandishing home invaders – as the terrified innocent victims Kathryn Johnston and Cory Maye did? If both that innocent couple and one or two pumped-up L.A. County sheriff’s deputies had ended up dead on the bedroom floor that early morning, would the Times still find it all so amusing?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowicz/suprynowicz66.html

 

[mdh]

Ok... I just read up on Paul's stance on drugs and I'm now wavering on the guy. You cannot legalize insanity and anarchy. Institutionalized legality of things which can kill you easily is insane.

Many people die from driving recklessly, but the government allows us to keep cars and even maintains the roads for us on which most people die from driving recklessly. Lots of things can kill you. That's your choice. If you feel that it is the role of the government to force people to only do things that are entirely safe, then we're probably not going to have much luck trying to talk to you about this issue. If you can, however, see the role of government as protecting people from eachother and from invaders and from government itself, then we're on the same page!

I can say with some certainty that Dr. Paul would end the sort of foreign intervention that the drug war of the Clinton era was famous for being so public about, such as paramilitary actions in South America, etc.

 

[lbrtylvr]

I hope so. His analysis is spot on and it is very refreshing to see a presidential candidate voice some common sense when it comes to drug prohibition.

 

[ronpaulitician]

A consequence of the drug war:

‘No-Knock’ Searches Get People Killed

http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowicz/suprynowicz66.html

I think I saw that movie... Training Day, right?

 

[angelatc]

If he allows states to prosecute the issue I have no problem. But if his position is the legality of drugs I have severe problems with that. I was to work with people on drugs, some became friends and some are now dead at young ages.
.

I'm sorry for your losses. Bear in mind he is a medical doctor, so I'm sure he has some experience on the front lines as well.

I'm pretty sure he wouldn't condone people selling smack at bus stops, but on the other hand, the Constitution does not give the power to spend money on a drug war to the Federal government.

He would allow the States to control it.

 

[mesler]

Medical marijuana I'm ok with. Will he legalize drugs? Someone let me know his position, I'm trying to research it myself.

I have a cousin who died from drug overdose. My brother is attending programs to help him with his prior pain medicine addiction.

Please, tell me how drug laws keep people from hurting themselves?

Let me answer my own question. My cousin died from illegal drugs. My brother got hooked on legal drugs. For me, the answer is not legalization vs criminalization, the answer is simply education and family. The laws are just a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.

 

[mikelovesgod]

Drugs don't kill people? Go snort some coke some night and tell me it can't happen. Crack addicts go to incredible lengths to get money to get more. Heroin kills so many people on just one night, so does speed balls.

Do you want to see the rise of innocent deaths? Legalize drugs, allow Walmart to sell it, and let's see what happens. Many, many, many people won't do them simply because of the fear of getting arrested and it stops their curiosity. Watch how many people die in proportion to what we have now.

Anything which can effectively kill you on one night by an accident should be illegal. You can't OD on weed, and ODing on alcohol is incredibly difficult and very rarely causes death, but it certainly can happen with crack, coke and heroin. One night and you are dead. I don't want that situation to be a reality.

Want no drug problem? Follow Madagascar's policy: found dealing drugs you die. The real problem is the justice system allowing this while the ACLU destroying justice by playing the system, and the gov't not arresting people and shipments they know exist. My freaking brother was a dealer, the cops knew it, and never did a thing until he almost died. I used to work with drug addicts so I know how the system works and how the juridical system is handcuffed to the new insanity of false civil liberties that are perpetrated by ingenious lawyers who defend the guilty looking for loopholes while be funded by drug dollars.

That's the problem, not this pseudo war we are facing.

Freedom implies morality. We are not free to murder, we are not free to defamation, etc.. We are not free to allow the traffic of illegal substances that can easily destroy life and the ignorant and innocent must be protected. This is institionalized license and to pretend that it will kill the Afghan trade of opium, or stop the bad guys in alleys from the perpetuation of a black market is myopic and sophomoric logic.

 

[dude58677]

Here are two articles from Harry Browne(the first is an article on the dangers of the drug war, the second is an outline on how Ron Paul can shrink small government):

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=23146

The Drug Warriors' biggest argument against medical marijuana is that it's only the opening wedge in a movement toward total legalization of drugs. So, supposedly, we have to "nip it in the bud" – in the words of Deputy Barney Fife, the nation's first Drug Czar.

What if the Drug Warriors are right?

What if legalizing medical marijuana turned out to be the first step on a journey that ended in the outright repeal of every drug law? What would America be like?

Understandably, many Americans fear that with no drug laws, we would have hundreds of thousands of addicts, crack babies, children trying drugs, and other evils. But that's what we have now.

Let's assume the worst

If all drugs were legal, addicts would no longer pay black-market prices to criminals for drugs of questionable and dangerous origin. They would get drugs produced by legitimate pharmaceutical companies and pay market prices. They would no longer die from buying toxic drugs, and they would no longer have to mug innocent people to support their habits.

If all drugs were legal, addicts could seek help by going to doctors – no longer afraid of being prosecuted for their medical problems.

If all drugs were legal, criminal drug dealers would no longer be on our streets. They couldn't compete with the low, free-market prices for drugs sold at pharmacies.

If all drugs were legal, criminal drug dealers would no longer prey upon our children – any more than distilleries and breweries try to infiltrate schools to hook kids on alcohol. When I grew up in Los Angeles in the 1940s, the worst schools were safer than L.A.'s best schools are today.

If all drugs were legal, our government would no longer be dispensing propaganda that makes children want to try the forbidden fruit.

Reducing street violence

If all drugs were legal, our prisons would be emptied of hundreds of thousands of non-violent people who have never done harm to anyone else. No longer would over-crowded prisons cause truly violent criminals to be free on early release and plea bargains to terrorize the rest of us.

If all drugs were legal, law-enforcement resources would be available to fight violent crime, instead of being used to chase people who may harm themselves but are no threat to us.

If all drugs were legal, much of the street violence would end – as it did when Alcohol Prohibition ended – because gangs of thugs would no longer be fighting over drug territories.

If all drugs were legal, police corruption would diminish, because criminals could no longer use black-market drug money to gain immunity by subverting weak policemen.

If all drugs were legal, the government could no longer use the Drug War as an excuse to tear up the Bill of Rights and pry into your bank account, strip-search you at an airport, tear your car apart, monitor your e-mail, or seize your property without even charging you with a crime.

Why do we know this?

Why do I think America would be like this if all drugs were legal?

Because that's the way it was before the drug laws were passed. Yes, there were people whose lives were destroyed by drugs then – just as some people today destroy their lives with drugs, alcohol, financial mistakes, or various character weaknesses – but far fewer people lost their lives to drugs when they were legal.

And America's streets were peaceful.

Has America changed since then? Of course it has. But cause-and-effect relationships don't change. Force still begets force. Government programs still lead to unintended and destructive consequences.

Re-legalizing drugs would put a stop to those destructive consequences – end the criminal black market, end the violence, end the incentive to hook children, and end the production of toxic drugs that kill people.

We have to quit being afraid of the unknown, and instead recognize what we do know – that the Drug War is doing enormous harm to society.

If we care about our children, if we care about our cities, if we care about our country, we have to end the insane War on Drugs.




http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=13247

On Wednesday, Joseph Farah told us what he would do if he were the new president. He focused mainly on whom he'd appoint to his cabinet, but I'd like to tell you what actions I'd take if I'd been elected president.

After my inaugural day, I'd probably spend little more than an hour a day in the Oval Office, because a busy president is a dangerous president. But for the very first day, I'd have an extremely long agenda.

On that first day in office, by executive order I would:


Pardon everyone who had been convicted on a federal, non-violent drug charge, order their immediate release, reunite them with their families, and restore all their civil rights. (Anyone convicted of using violence against someone else in a drug case would not qualify as "non-violent.")

Pardon everyone who had been convicted on any federal gun-control charge, tax-evasion charge, or any other victimless crime, order their immediate release, and restore all their civil rights.

I would empty the prisons of those who haven't harmed anyone else and make room for the violent criminals who are currently getting out on plea bargains and early release.
Following the issuance of the pardons:


I would announce a policy to penalize, dismiss, or even prosecute any federal employee who violated the Bill of Rights by treating you as guilty until proven innocent, by searching or seizing your property without due process of law, by treating you as a servant, or in any other way violating your rights as a sovereign American citizen.

I would immediately order that no federal asset forfeiture could occur unless the property's owner had been convicted by full due process. And I would initiate steps to make restitution to anyone whose property had been impounded, frozen, or seized by the federal government without a legal conviction. (Over 80 percent of such seizures occur when no one has even been charged with a crime.)

As commander in chief of the Armed Forces, I would immediately remove all American troops from foreign soil. Europe and Asia can pay for their own defense, and they can risk their own lives in their eternal squabbles. This would save billions of dollars a year in taxes, but -- more important -- it would make sure your sons and daughters never fight or die in someone else's war.

I would order everyone in the executive branch to stop harassing smokers, tobacco companies, successful computer companies, gun owners, gun manufacturers, alternative medicine suppliers, religious groups (whether respected or labeled as "cults"), investment companies, health-care providers, businessmen, or anyone else who's conducting his affairs peaceably.

I would end federal affirmative action, federal quotas, set-asides, preferential treatments, and other discriminatory practices of the federal government. Any previous president could have done this with a stroke of the pen. Do you wonder why none of them did?

And then I would break for lunch.
There's more ...
After lunch, I would begin the process of removing from the Federal Register the thousands and thousands of regulations and executive orders inserted there by previous presidents. In most cases these regulations give federal employees powers for which there is no constitutional authority.

I would call Office Depot and order a carload of pens -- to use to veto congressional bills that violate the Constitution or that spend more money than necessary for the constitutional functions of government.

I would send to Congress a budget that immediately cuts federal spending in half -- on its way to reducing the government to no larger than its constitutional size.

Congress would undoubtedly pass a larger budget and expect me to sign it. I wouldn't. I'd veto it.

Would Congress override my veto?

Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn't.

Even if Congress succeeded in passing bills over my veto, the battle finally would be joined. We finally would have something we haven't had in my lifetime -- a president standing up to Congress.

At long last, there would be two sides arguing in Washington -- one to increase government and one to cut it sharply -- instead of the current trivial debate over whether government should grow 5 percent a year or "only" 3 percent.

Just say no
No president in the past several decades has had the will, the determination, the courage to "just say no" to Congress.

No president in the past several decades has even tried to reduce the size of government. Any president who wanted to do so could have managed it -- even in the face of a hostile Congress.

No president since the 1950s has proposed a single budget that would reduce the size of the federal government. And when Congress has come back with even larger budgets, no president has vetoed them.

Every president who claimed to be against big government has had that veto at his disposal, but none thought enough of your freedom to use it.

As president, I would -- for the first time -- use that office on your behalf. I would say no to Congress. Whatever new program it wanted to spend money on, I would veto. Whatever new tax it wanted to impose, I would veto. Whatever new intrusion it wanted to make in your life, I would veto.

No deals. No excuses. No apologies. No regrets.

But I would do more than just defend what little freedom you have left today. I would go on the offensive. I wouldn't rest until the income tax was repealed, the federal government was so small you wouldn't worry about who was elected president, and you had control over your own money, your own freedom, your own life.

And when we achieved this, we'd have a celebration. Do you remember the German youths who tore down the Berlin Wall and sold pieces of it to us?

Well, we would tear down the IRS building and sell the pieces -- and use the proceeds to help IRS agents find honest work.

Do you think any of my plans would appeal to George W. Bush or Al Gore?

Not likely, is it?

So why are we worrying over which one of them will win the current legal mud-wrestling?

 

[X_805]

He would allow the States to control it.

And the states would be more efficient at controlling it.

I am actually against legalizing drugs, but I say let the states see what programs will suit them better. If one state's system seems to work better at making the overall population better, then I imagine other states will follow.

I think the state's are supposed to be miniature American experiments in society, all doing their own version of what they believe government should do. What works best will prevail.